Got clued in on this report.

[Coresair]

Correction, you are a douche. You embody your own douche. You are like a douche bottle, except less useful.

Anyways I was taught that skepticism is a good thing (in healthy amounts). I WILL not go believing something simply because someone heard it on some show, or found a PDF which does not state the method of how the information has been gathered. I am skeptical because the provided "fact" does not correspond with my observations.

Perhaps if they broke it down into age of multi-player vs single player games we could get a more clear picture.

[Forboding Angel]

Thats pretty expensive.

For a card that you can repeatedly play it's abilities for 4 uncolored mana? Are you insane?

That's like saying Elvish Piper is a shitty card.

[MidKnight]

Both of you guys are being pretty angry. I think you both see each others' points but don't want to acknowledge them.

Maybe a hug will fix things?

[Coresair]

Actually my hatred was directed at you, MK.

[MidKnight]

Actually my hatred was directed at you, MK.

*hug*

[Teutooni]

Thats pretty expensive.

For a card that you can repeatedly play it's abilities for 4 uncolored mana? Are you insane?

That's like saying Elvish Piper is a shitty card.

How do you plan to pay it after initial cost of 6 and all your lands in exile?

[knorke]

Point is that it is still a reasonable report, I was interested in the varying places they pull data from and some of the points they make.

I too was interessetd in seeing how they got those numbers. Sadly they do not say what places they pulled their data from at all. That alone makes it hard to take the report serious.
At the end they list some companies that make up the "ESA".
So did they only inlcude the games of those listed companies?
We dont know.
In fact they do not explain their stats at all.

I shit you not, 2 christmases ago I was at my aunts and the adults were all playing wii bowling with the kids.

So two years ago your aunts played a bit of wii bowling for one evening. Can not compare that to people who play several hours of LoL, CoD,... per week.
Still in this statistic they count the same.

clearly they are trying to counter act the whole vidiagames turn ur kids into killing machines

Probally. It helps to boost sales. Also adverts like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxpGU6l9U1Q
where they try to make it look like gaming is something for the whole family and your grandpa.

Nine out of 10 parents pay attention to the content of the games their children play

No way. Maybe some parents like to believe that.

[Jazcash]

I'm just glad to know I'm not the only one who watches PhillyD.

[nightcold]

well asking about the actually reliability of the source dose not automatically make you a pessimistic douche....

actually as time goes on, avg gamer age will go up .... for the same reason my parents still listen to old crapy music that was popular when they were young....(prob, we will have to see about population increases...you know what if there is boom in children births for a younger generation, and they all play vidgames..)

and yes, smoth is own my personal researcher....get over it

[Forboding Angel]

Thats pretty expensive.

For a card that you can repeatedly play it's abilities for 4 uncolored mana? Are you insane?

That's like saying Elvish Piper is a shitty card.

How do you plan to pay it after initial cost of 6 and all your lands in exile?

Well hopefully you would plan ahead and have enough lands in your deck to compensate. For that matter, if I were using a deck with this card I would use a sacrafice artifact deck with prolly 100 or so cards heavy on drawing and colorless mana

[smoth]

Point is that it is still a reasonable report, I was interested in the varying places they pull data from and some of the points they make.

I too was interessetd in seeing how they got those numbers. Sadly they do not say what places they pulled their data from at all. That alone makes it hard to take the report serious.
At the end they list some companies that make up the "ESA".
So did they only inlcude the games of those listed companies?
We dont know.
In fact they do not explain their stats at all.

I wonder where the full report is to be sure. It seems like this is just the data pulled from a MUCH MUCH larger report.

I shit you not, 2 christmases ago I was at my aunts and the adults were all playing wii bowling with the kids.

So two years ago your aunts played a bit of wii bowling for one evening. Can not compare that to people who play several hours of LoL, CoD,... per week.
Still in this statistic they count the same.

The point was that older people DO play. When I played COD I played it late at night and mostly found myself in games with adults. When I stayed up too late I met brit kidss and if I came on early I met a few 'merican kids. But that was mostly outside of the hardcore playlist. Halo the proportion was much higher for me. It varied from playlist to playlist. Objective based like ctf I saw less kids than I saw in team deathmatch and slightly less in ffa. The bomb mode of COD I seldom ever played with kids.

clearly they are trying to counter act the whole vidiagames turn ur kids into killing machines

Probally. It helps to boost sales. Also adverts like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxpGU6l9U1Q
where they try to make it look like gaming is something for the whole family and your grandpa.

That is my point. I wonder what other graphs they have. This report is on their front page so it is a PR deal ADD to it that it is setup like a sales brochure. I wonder about the motives as well.

Nine out of 10 parents pay attention to the content of the games their children play

No way. Maybe some parents like to believe that.

My guess is this was a poll and in polls people see themselves as better than they are. Not many people have the humility to say "nah I really don't know about that nintendo thing my kids play". also while that is the conclusion we don't know the question.

If the pdf was more detailed it would loose the elegant simplicity to easily convey thoughts. People would get lost in the details.

Even still, as I said, gamers are getting older, that is not changing. So an average range of 37 is believable.

What about the genre charts? They were pretty believable mainly because I think starcraft skewed the rts genre for this year.

[Gota]

I like how there is a side conversation about the we need to go deeper joke card Smoth posted....

[Panda]

As Smoth has indicated, presentation of a research report is important. Without a good presentation, no one would have published it to enable people to become aware of this topic in the first place. The scientific community wouldn't publish a messy looking research report either, even if the statistics were great, so neither should a company performing its research. Besides, Smoth's right, if you really wanted to know all of the detailed statistics nothing's stopping you from looking them up yourself and it is not necessary or particularly relevant for him to dig them up for anyone who wants to see them. Clearly, the purpose of this thread was to discuss the points raised about gaming by this study. I think that this article, regardless of whether or not the if the evidence is probably skewed in favor the company that produced the games being sold, is well suited for that purpose.

[zwzsg]

Some of the top reasons why gamers purchase a computer or video game: quality of game graphics, an interesting storyline, a sequel to a favorite game, word of mouth

[momfreeek]

i couldn't find any explanation of how they classify a "game player" (is it supposed to represent everyone playing games at any given time or everyone who played a game in the last year or what?). Am I missing something?

this page shows a massive gap between UK and US figures (UK report is 5 yrs old tho). It would be interesting if this was representative of a difference between the cultures but it seems all too vague:

http://www.theaveragegamer.com/averagegamers/

[smoth]

Some of the top reasons why gamers purchase a computer or video game: quality of game graphics, an interesting storyline, a sequel to a favorite game, word of mouth

Yeah I know but let's examine that:
Graphics:
first impressions are important.
Storyline:
Why am I here and what is my motive to continue? People want to be interested by the goings on of the game. Hell squaresoft is a master of this.
Sequel:
people don't like to take chances and want to go with a similar thing to thier last positive experience.
Word of mouth:
I heard this game was good, I think I'll try it.


Fun thing is that spring could possibly benefit from word of mouth, after we get the stability shit(freeze at finalizing, black terrain etc) dealt with.

[Gota]

LoL
except spring has shitty gfx, shitty animation no storyline or campaigns and its none of the games on spring are a recognized sequel.

[Panda]

Some of the top reasons why gamers purchase a computer or video game: quality of game graphics, an interesting storyline, a sequel to a favorite game, word of mouth

Yeah I know but let's examine that:
Graphics:
first impressions are important.
Storyline:
Why am I here and what is my motive to continue? People want to be interested by the goings on of the game. Hell squaresoft is a master of this.
Sequel:
people don't like to take chances and want to go with a similar thing to thier last positive experience.
Word of mouth:
I heard this game was good, I think I'll try it.


Fun thing is that spring could possibly benefit from word of mouth, after we get the stability shit(freeze at finalizing, black terrain etc) dealt with.

Hopefully, creative people will always find a way to keep some games from being too mainstreamed.

[Johannes]

I think that more than the technical graphics quallity, the art style matters at making good 1st impression.

[knorke]

So basically you admit that the .pfd's stats are useless because there is no info on how they were produced but its okay because they look nice and elegant?
I dont want to see the full reports filled by every person but there is no background at all.
No "scientific community" would take such a paper serious or publish it.

The ESA is not part of any "scientific community" by the way, according to wikipedia what they do is:
* Presenting the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3 Media and Business Summit, currently the Electronic Entertainment Expo)
* Supporting the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB)
* Combating copyright infringement of software
* Combating governmentally imposed video game censorship and regulation

What part of this is science?
Looks more like the combined legal + advertising + PR department of some companies.

i couldn't find any explanation of how they classify a "game player" (is it supposed to represent everyone playing games at any given time or everyone who played a game in the last year or what?).

According to smoths example: playing wii bowling once every 2 years = gamer.
If others hobbies are rated similiar then I am a gokart racer, churchgoer, paintball player, golfer, alcoholic,...

none of the games on spring are a recognized sequel.

AA->BA->CA